Letters - February 22, 2016

With massive year on year budget cuts, it’s a case of ‘sharing the sugar’ - council revenue streams should be maximised.

Encouraging weekend reduced price parking should be introduced to make the Talbot Multi Storey a year round profitable destination car park.

The weekend turnover figures for this site are poor for what is probably one of the finest car parks in the region. Greater footfall increases the possibilities of encouraging new private investment in the town.

Weekend music, arts, dance, equality, and comedy festivals should be encouraged for event promoters to use this near empty car park at a reduced rate. Attracting a better demographic to Blackpool is crucial for the town’s economic development.

Stephen Pierre

Artistic Director

Blackpool Jazz and Blues Festival 2016

BREXIT

Not a great reason from Labour MP

After the deceptions, the smoke and mirrors, the ostrich-style head-burying, the self-delusion and broken promises, it had seemed that the case for Brexit would prevail but not necessarily so.

Labour MP, Jess Phillips, has zapped us with a seemingly irrefutable argument. She apparently believes that we should stay in the EU ‘because her brother lives in France’.

Phew! My own intellectual arguments now lie in tatters.

Via email

POLITICS

No reason to cut number of MPs

Isn’t it strange that the Government wants to cut the number of elected MPs while increasing the number of unelected peers?

And this despite a cross-party committee finding no good reason for reducing the number of MPs.

As Professor Anthony King points out, this also reduces the already limited pool of MPs who are suitable to be Ministers.

Reducing the number of MPs means redrawing constituency boundaries on a larger scale.

Now I may be a twisted old cynic, but isn’t it highly likely that this will favour the Conservatives at the next General Election?

David Cameron’s political advisor Lynton Crosby is a veteran of Australian politics where he helped the Liberal Party and allies to victory. Boundary changes were notoriously used to keep minority parties in power in certain states.

Could Crosby have suggested such a thing?

He might have learned from that wily old bird Jim Callaghan who delayed implementing a Boundary Commission review that would cost Labour seats.

It did no good.

Labour lost the next

election.

Roger Backhouse,

Address supplied

HEATLTH

Voting system is too simplistic

Mr Hunt validates his action in imposing the new NHS contract on junior doctors by mentioning the outcome of the last election.

He maintains the electorate has given a mandate for the NHS reforms because the proposals were in the Tories’ manifesto.

But the electorate cast their votes for many different reasons – loyalty to the party, voting for another party because of dissatisfaction with their own political party.

Other than the box to tick for the candidate, there are no boxes to confirm or not confirm the approval of a given policy.

This is an inherent weakness in the voting system.

So it is too simplistic for any minister or member of Parliament, or local councillors for that matter, whatever colour, to state they have a mandate for a given policy.

Michael Reilly

Via email

RETAIL

Support our butchers - buy local

Without a shadow of a doubt, some of the most tolerant and hard-working business members of our society are family butchers.

They have to compete with many supermarkets who are prepared to buy and sell cheap foreign imported meats, not giving a jot of how it was reared and where from.

Butchers deserve better support from us Brits.

There isn’t all that great a difference in price and, in my long life’s experience, cheapest is very often far from the best. So let’s all remember without farmers there would be no local butchers and without local butchers there would be a big shortage of stock farmers.

I, for one, will buy locally sourced meat.

Ken Holmes

Address supplied

LOTTERY

I’m no longer in it to win it!

After adding 10 numbers to the Lotto draw some months ago – increasing the odds of winning from 14 million to one to 45 million to one – there have been very few jackpot winners of the National Lottery and the money has kept on rolling over.

Last Wednesday was a final rollover and Camelot guaranteed the jackpot of £28.6m had to be won or, if there were no jackpot winners, it would be shared among the next level of winners. There were 78 people with five numbers so they should have received £366,666 each. Instead they got just £883 each.

I stopped buying lottery tickets when Camelot doubled the ticket price from £1 to £2. Adding the 10 extra numbers was clearly a further move by Camelot to reduce the chances of players winning any of the prizes.